Per Aspera Ad Astra
by Ash Dogen
Summary: In the aftermath of A New Hope, a smuggler and a princess attempt to chart the course of a fledgling relationship in the midst of a war. Essentially, what might have happened had it taken Han and Leia a lot less than three years to begin to realise how they felt about one another. An AU version of the Han/Leia relationship that will span and eventually go beyond the OT timeline.
1. Prologue

_I really didn't want or intend to start writing another multi-chapter story given I'm already working on one but this idea popped into my head last night and I had to get it written._

 _There are some brilliant stories out there that have already offered an alternative portrayal of the Han/Leia relationship while following the canon timeline and this is my own attempt at that. This prologue kind of arrived in my thoughts fully-formed and from it has come the outline of a pretty extensive story. I purposely made this opening as brief as I could and there's an awful lot to come before and after this particular point in the story.  
_

 _Chapter One will begin very early on after ANH and then carry on through ESB and ROTJ, and possibly beyond, but the events that follow will obviously be AU. It's a bit of a challenge as a concept because I don't want to compromise on the argumentative dynamic between them that works so well in the films. So essentially this is a "what might have happened had it taken a lot less than three years for Han and Leia to begin to realise and admit they had feelings for one another" type of story._

* * *

"General Rieekan! Sir, we have contact with the _Millennium Falcon!"_

Leia's stomach lurched and her hands began to tremble involuntarily. She raced from one side of the chaotic command centre to the other, battling to reach the console that Rieekan was now crouched by, a headset pressed tightly against his ear.

"It's a coded message, sir, requesting clearance to land," the young communications officer who'd hailed Rieekan was saying.

"That's not Solo's comm code, though," Rieekan muttered, casting a nervous glance at Leia who was now looking on over his shoulder. She reached for the console chair, digging her fingernails into the cushioned back in an attempt to still the tremors in her hands, striving to maintain her composure.

"No sir, its Lieutenant Holbrix's," replied the officer. "I've transmitted the clearance already and asked for more information but he just keeps sending that same message over and over."

Rieekan stood and made his way over to the large radar console in the centre of the room, Leia at his side. "How far out are they?" he asked, noting the small red dot that had appeared on the very edge of the radar and was inching its way gradually toward the large blue circle at the centre of the screen that represented the Alliance's current base.

"Around ten minutes, General," answered another officer standing at the console, tracking the _Falcon's_ progress.

"Comm Commander Mellorn," Rieekan ordered. "I want medical personnel standing by in the hangar when that ship lands, we don't know how many of our people Solo managed to get out of there and how many of them are wounded." He turned to Leia and found her staring transfixed at the red dot on the radar, her lips moving soundlessly. When Rieekan laid his hand gently on her shoulder, she jumped. "Come on," he said quietly. "We'll wait for them in the hangar."

Leia only nodded and allowed Rieekan to steer her out of the command centre into the bustling main access corridor. Ignoring propriety, the general maintained his gentle and familial hold on her shoulder.

"They're going to be okay," he murmured quietly, soothingly so that only Leia could hear. "He's going to be okay."

Leia nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She wanted to believe him, with every fibre of her being, but fear and doubt gnawed away at her. She couldn't shift the feeling that, this time, something was wrong.

This day had been the realisation of her very worst fears, the ones that had haunted her since Yavin. She'd been stuck on the sidelines while everyone that she loved, had left in this galaxy, were in danger. It was a scenario she'd fought against becoming a reality for so long; danger was an inherent part of their lives with the Rebellion and she understood that there were times she would have to let the others put themselves at risk. She couldn't stop Luke going an assignments with Rogue Squadron or go with Han and Chewie on every supply run they carried out for the Alliance.

But it was in situations likes this, when the three of them were together and facing the same danger, that Leia would do everything in her power to be with them. The thought of losing one of them was agonising; the idea that she could lose all three in one cruel stroke of fate was unbearable.

This time she'd had to stay behind, watch as Han and Chewie raced to provide the aid that Luke and the strike team he was leading had urgently requested. And she'd spent every moment since praying to whatever higher power existed in the galaxy that they'd all return safely.

"You're shaking," Rieekan murmured from beside her as they walked.

"I'm fine," Leia replied in as steady a voice as she could muster. "I just want to know they're safe."

"They will be," Rieekan replied. "Han would never have taken off from there without Luke and there is no way that Chewbacca would ever leave Han behind. It was Chewie that sent the initial comm that they were ready to take off and if he was on the _Falcon_ then so were Han and Luke."

He was right. Leia knew that.

But the nagging fear remained. She couldn't explain or escape the shadow of doubt that lingered in her mind and in her gut, the instinctual notion that something was wrong.

By the time they'd reached the hangar, a space had been cleared for the _Falcon_ to land. A group of medics were congregated there already, primed to treat any of the wounded that Han and Chewie had been able to evacuate. A nervous tension hung in the air; two ships had departed the base the day before and neither were returning. The sense of trepidation amongst those that had gathered to await the _Falcon_ was palpable.

With her eyes fixed on the horizon, at the small outline of a distant ship that was growing steadily larger, Leia's thoughts turned back to that morning.

If there was such a thing as blissful happiness, that's what she'd felt then. For so long her life had been unbalanced; she'd struggled so arduously to find some sense of stability, to feel able to prioritise her own happiness alongside her commitment to the Rebellion and its cause. Having lost everything at the hands of the Empire, having believed that there was no future for her beyond toppling Imperial rule and healing the wounds it had inflicted on the galaxy, she had found something else to fight for; a personal life beyond her professional aspirations, the promise of love and everything that it brought.

She couldn't let that slip away; she wouldn't.

She would do anything and everything it would take to make the future that she and Han had envisaged a reality. Having overcome so much over the course of a relationship that had already had to endure and overcome so many obstacles, she resolved that from this moment, they would not be parted again, that she would be at his side to face any and all dangers that came their way.

As the _Falcon_ touched down in the hangar, she felt Rieekan take and gently squeeze her hand. "Han is okay," he murmured in quiet reassurance.

Leia simply nodded before fighting her way through the crowd that had gathered around the ship as the entrance ramp slowly began to lower.

Jedd Holbrix, the Rogue Squadron pilot that Luke had recruited into this mission, was the first to descend. He looked physically unharmed, except for a small gash above his right eye but his uniform bore the signs of a fierce battle. As he left the _Falcon_ , Jedd kept his head bowed, his eyes determinedly avoiding catching those of any of the gathered onlookers. Without a word, ignoring the questions of both Rieekan and Draven, he simply walked away.

The fear in the pit of Leia's stomach intensified.

But then, there was Luke. He looked in shock; his eyes were wide and he was disjointed, unsteady steps toward her.

Before any of the medics could reach him, Leia had hurtled up the ramp and thrown her arms around his neck, closing her eyes against the tears that had finally begun to fall but now in relief rather than pain or fear. Luke was safe and, as Rieekan had said earlier, that meant that Han and Chewie had to be okay too.

She felt Luke slowly, almost unsurely, begin to return her embrace; he was trembling worse that she had been. So she tightened the hold she had around him, whispering whatever words of comfort came to her mind. From close to her ear, she heard Luke mumble her name in a tremulous voice.

Letting him go, she looked beyond his shoulder in anticipation of finding Han and Chewie standing by, awaiting their own welcome.

But neither was there.

"Where are the others?" she asked, guessing that they were most likely shutting the ship down.

"Commander Skywalker!" One of the medics had stepped forward and interrupted. "How many are wounded? Where are they?"

Luke shook his head, seemingly struggling to find his voice. "There's no one else," he finally said quietly.

A heavy silence fell throughout the hangar. Seventeen officers had been on the strike team; only Luke and Jedd had survived.

"Luke." Leia took his hand in both of hers and squeezed tightly. His eyes were unfocused and he seemed to be unwilling to meet her gaze. "Luke," she tried again in as gentle a tone as she could manage. "Luke, where are Han and Chewie?"

Finally, he looked at her and as he did, Leia saw tears gather in his eyes. "Chewie's in the cockpit," he rasped.

Rieekan had joined them. "Luke, what happened?" he asked.

"Where's Han?" Leia demanded, desperation creeping into her voice now, the fear and panic mounting again.

Pulling his hand from her grasp, Luke braced both of his arms behind his head and staggered backward, shaking his head. "There...I was-"he stammered, his eyes darting between Leia and Rieekan. "Everything happened so fast...Han was there but he-he said to-"

"Luke!"

Leia's throat had constricted, her breath hitched. Realisation of what Luke was trying to say, what he couldn't say, began to dawn on her. She needed him to tell her that she was wrong, needed to see Han now.

She made to push past Luke, to move further into the _Falcon_ but he stopped her, grabbing her by the wrist. And when she turned to face Luke, she saw a single tear fall, carving a clear path through the dirt and grime that covered his face.

"Han's gone, Leia," he said simply.

It was like being thumped in the stomach, hit over the head; the words echoed in her ears but simply wouldn't register in her mind. No, Luke was wrong, this was all some kind of horrible mistake. Rational thought escaped Leia and she wrenched her hand free, only one thought in her mind: get to the cockpit.

She stormed through the silent ship, aware that Rieekan and Luke were following, saying things that couldn't penetrate the roar of her racing thoughts and emotions. One of them reached out to grab her by the shoulder and she roughly shook whoever it was off.

Reaching the cockpit, she found only Chewie. The Wookie was slumped in his chair, his face buried in two large paws. He was moaning pitifully.

Upon seeing Chewie's disconsolate demeanour and the empty seat beside him, the pieces all fell cruelly into place for Leia.

Han was gone and he'd taken with him a future she'd so desperately craved and believed in, would now never have

In the doorway of the _Falcon's_ cockpit, she collapsed to her knees and wept.


	2. Chapter 1

_I was hoping to publish this first chapter on Monday, by Tuesday at the very latest but getting it to a point where I felt it worked proved to be a complete nightmare. I've gone back and forth over how to start it, where in the timeline to start it, whose perspective to write it from. At times I really considered just giving up on it completely. But, finally, it's done and it serves its purpose in the grand scheme of things in this story.  
_

 _So the prologue I posted on Sunday will be the midway point of the story; a lot is going to happen before it reaches that point, as well as after it, and this first chapter goes right back to the beginning, to a little over a week after the events of ANH where everything is very new and very confusing for Han and Leia. This is really introspective and is just establishing everything, which might be why it was such a chore to write at times, but things will start to progress fairly quickly after this. Hopefully you'll get a sense here of where Han and Leia are in terms of their mindsets early on in this AU.  
_

* * *

Leia Organa hated Han Solo.

She'd known him for little over a week, barely any time at all. But she hated him.

Or at least that was what she tried to convince herself.

Having been the youngest senator ever elected to serve in the Imperial Senate, Leia had experienced enough over the course of her brief political career to believe that she had encountered the most obstinate of beings, had dealt with the most insolent of characters that populated this galaxy that she was striving to make better.

But she'd never encountered anyone as perplexing, infuriating and intriguing as this belligerent Corellian that had hurtled headlong into her life.

He was a walking contradiction, an enigma that she suspected would take decades to unravel; he played the part of a self-involved mercenary and yet had done _something_ in his life to earn the steadfast devotion of a Wookie that rarely left his side; he claimed to care about no one and nothing except himself and his precious ship and yet had placed both at great risk on more than one occasion in aid of herself and the Rebellion; he professed to having every intention of leaving the Alliance and yet remained with them four days on from the evacuation to their new base on Drongar.

He was simply beyond understanding; utterly infuriating yet endlessly fascinating.

And Leia wanted him to stay. So much that it terrified her.

It was ridiculous to feel so strongly about someone she really didn't know, someone who exasperated her to the extent that Han did and who claimed to have no interest in either her or the cause to which she was devoted.

At times, it felt as though they would never manage to navigate a rational, meaningful discussion. Instead, they engaged in pointless little battles of will; he'd make fun of her, take amusement in how much his absurd nicknames would irritate her, so she'd fire back with insults of her own. It could go on and on, back and forth for hours until one of them, usually Leia, would finally lose patience and storm off.

She knew that the simplest solution would be to simply stay away from him; it wasn't as though they had anything at all in common. Fate had contrived to throw them both together but there was nothing now to prevent them from going their separate ways. Leia would always be grateful to him for the part he'd played in freeing her from Imperial captivity but Han had made it clear when they'd met that he wasn't interested in, and didn't particularly want, her gratitude. He'd demanded a financial reward in return for his good deed and the Alliance had seen to it that he'd gotten a substantial one so any debt between them was now settled.

But Leia still found herself drawn to him, inexplicably and unnervingly.

She had really tried to convince herself that she did hate him, that someone like Han could have no real purpose in her life. And yet she was desperate to understand him, was sure that there was far more to him than the mercurial facade he presented to the rest of the galaxy. She wanted to piece together all of the fragments of his complicated character, to make him see that his life could have a real purpose if he only allowed himself to care about something other than his own interests.

So, she supposed, she didn't really hate Han at all; she hated the effect that he had on her.

He wasn't like Luke who was earnest and straightforward. Luke wore his heart on his sleeve, didn't hide behind biting sarcasm and aggravating cynicism. She could depend on Luke, count on him to share her ideals and trust that he wasn't going to just walk away from the Rebellion, from her, at any given moment. She cared about him, appreciated the connection that they shared.

Luke was dependability personified; Han was risk.

And Leia was not prepared to gamble or waste her time on risks at this point in her life, not after having endured and lost everything that she had. She wanted Han to stay but was determined that she would not ask him to do so; she wanted him to _want_ to stay, though she knew that he never would.

And she suspected that the longer he did stay, the more it would hurt her when he left.

Because Han _would_ leave, that was inevitable.

And when he did go, Leia knew that she would take it as rejection; a rejection of the Rebellion and everything it stood for, rejection of everything they'd gone through together and the impact that it _must_ have had on him, rejection of her.

So Leia guarded herself against that. She lashed out with the intent of hurting him and she knew that there had been at least a couple of occasions where she'd succeeded and he had withdrawn away from her as a result. Even if she didn't really hate him, she could _pretend_ to hate him, try desperately in vain to convince herself that she didn't care if he left because the intensity with which she wanted him to stay was too unsettling to comprehend.

It wasn't as though Leia had the time to spare for thoughts of Han Solo in any event, not when her responsibilities to the Rebellion were so extensive and demanding.

She'd arrived on Drongar fully aware that her presence was not entirely welcome. Several members of High Command, Davits Draven chief among them, had not bothered to mask their contempt for her; as far as they were concerned, Leia was a child being allowed to indulge in a fantasy of having something to offer in the realm of adults, an upstart politician who had no place on the front line of their escalating war against the Empire.

So, as she did whenever she was so unwisely underestimated, Leia had set out to prove her doubters wrong.

She worked tirelessly and diligently, from dawn until dusk, grasping eagerly onto any assignment or task that was available.

Work brought welcome distraction from the grief that was an interminable ache in the pit of her stomach, the shadow that she could see lurking behind her eyes every time she looked in the mirror. By day she could pretend that it wasn't there; bury it beneath stoic professionalism. But at night it took hold of her subconscious, manifested itself in nightmares that were so powerful, so viseral, that she would awaken screaming in terror.

So Leia fought off sleep. She would retire to her quarters at night with reports that needed to be analysed, plans that needed to be approved and signed off on by a member of High Command. She sustained herself on tasteless ration bars and endless cups of the strongest caf, would do anything it took to keep herself awake for as long as was possible.

The stifling humidity of Drongar offered some assistance in that.

Whoever had drawn up the plans for this base and overseen its construction had not possessed the common sense to have had environmental controls units installed in the personnel quarters. So night brought no respite from the unceasing heat of the planet's tropical climate.

Whereas as a growing number of the Drongar staff were threatening mutiny unless High Command did something about the situation, Leia had no problem tolerating it; given the lingering threat of having to relive her ordeal aboard the Death Star if she allowed herself to sleep, she found enduring the humidity a perfectly welcome alternative.

And rather than concern herself with the hazards of the local weather system, she was concentrating on a far more pressing matter.

As she pored over star-charts and diagrams of interstellar shipping lanes, Leia was drawing up plans for the first official mission that she hoped to lead on behalf of High Command. The recruitment of supply pilots that would transport weapons, construction materials and food to Drongar had been made a priority and Leia, with the backing of Carlist Rieekan, had requested the opportunity to head up the operation herself, aware that she had no room for error given the already low opinion that some of her colleagues had of her capabilities. Having been granted an opportunity to prove her worth, Leia was determined not to fail.

She'd already identified a planet of interest: Ord Mantell, one of the most prominent trading posts in the Mid Rim. Now she was drawing up her proposal to begin the search for pilots there, hopeful that she would find at least of couple of potential recruits who could be trusted with the location of a covert Alliance base, when there was a knock at her door.

Glancing at the chronometer on her desk, Leia saw that it was much later than she had realised. Luke and Rieekan had taken to checking on her intermittently over the past couple of days so she assumed that one of them had come to make sure that she had eaten at least one square meal that day or was stopping her work for long enough to have a proper night's sleep. But she was surprised that either of them would still be awake to call on her at this hour.

Upon the door sliding open, her stomach clenched involuntarily.

It was Han, leaning casually against the wall.

"Evening, sweetheart," he said brightly, as though him seeking her out at this time of night was perfectly normal behaviour. Leia noticed that, in spite of the heat, he'd exchanged the black vest he'd worn since she'd met him on the Death Star for a dark blue jacket and thought, bizarrely, that it made him look smarter, more professional; more like an officer than a smuggler.

Perhaps sensing that he was not going to be extended an invitation to enter her quarters, his customary smirk faded slightly and he shifted a little awkwardly on his feet, placing one hand inside a pocket of his jacket. The other, Leia noted, was tucked behind his back as though he was hiding something.

"You mind if I come in for a minute?" he asked. "There's something I wanted to talk to you about."

She had half a mind to tell him no, that she wasn't in the mood to deal with his nonsense. But her curiosity to know why he had come to her now gave her pause; against her better judgement Leia stepped aside, allowing him to move past her and into the room.

"Nice place you've got here," he said jovially. Taking in the bed, desk and one closet, he grinned. "Very...roomy."

Leia bit back a sharp retort, resisted the urge to snap at him to get on with whatever he wanted to say and then leave.

"You working at this time of night?" he asked, taking note of the charts and datapads that spanned the surface of her desk. "Wow...you really don't quit, huh?"

"You said you had a reason for coming here?" This man could push the limits of her patience to their brink so quickly.

He smirked at her and she fought against a sudden impulse to slap it off his smug face. From behind his back, Han dramatically presented a small, ancient-looking contraption. Upon closer inspection, Leia realised that it was an air cooler.

"I found this when I was cleaning out the storage lockers on the _Falcon_ earlier and thought you could use it," he explained. "Needed a little work to get it going again but I put in a new motor so it should be alright for you now."

Leia stood slack-jawed, stunned into silence. She would never have expected him to make such a selfless gesture, to have thought of her when he'd found the air cooler and then fix it for her benefit.

Without a word, she took it from him and placed it on her desk. Powering it on, she closed her eyes in relief at the feel of the chilled air against her skin; she'd tolerated the heat without complaint but nonetheless appreciated not having to put up with it any longer.

"Much better, huh?"

Leia nodded. "Thank you," she said quietly.

He made a motion with his hand as though he was brushing off her gratitude. They stood in awkward silence for a moment, Han rocking slightly on the heels of his boots while Leia braced herself against her desk, watching him expectantly; she could sense that he hadn't come to see her simply to give her the air cooler and so she waited for him to speak again.

"You mind if I sit down?" he finally asked, gesturing to her bed.

There was something unnerving about the idea of him sitting there, where she slept, but Leia chose not to voice it. Instead she shrugged, feigning indifference, which Han clearly took for permission as he moved to sit on the edge of the bunk while Leia sat in the chair at the desk.

He'd taken notice of one of the star-charts that she'd laid across her pillow earlier, a map of the Expansion Regions on which she'd marked the various spaceports and outposts.

"This have something to do with you looking for pilots to run supplies for your revolution?" Han asked, gesturing at the chart.

"How do you know about that?" As the assignment hadn't yet been officially authorised to proceed, no one outside of High Command should have known about it.

"The kid told me about it earlier," he answered with a sly smile. "Come on Princess, you should know by now that Luke can't keep his mouth shut about anything."

Leia cursed herself. She had confided in Luke about the mission she was planning but she hadn't expected that he would go running to Han to tell him all about it. She made a mental note to be more careful when it came to discussing confidential matters.

"Don't be mad at him," Han continued, having noticed her obvious annoyance. "He's worried about you...seems to think that your pals on High Command are getting on your back about it all, that Draven's giving you a hard time."

"I can handle it," she snapped.

He narrowed his eyes slightly and Leia withdrew into herself in response, uneasy that he appeared to be scrutinising her. The last thing she needed or wanted was for Han Solo to start casting doubts over her usefulness in the Alliance so she tried to maintain an expression of indifference, hoping that he wouldn't push the matter further.

"I don't doubt that," he finally said quietly. He motioned to the datapad at her desk on which she had been drafting her proposal to High Command. "What've you got so far?" he asked.

"Not a lot," Leia admitted shortly.

He nodded, rubbing his hands together absently. She got the impression that he was turning over something in his mind and working up to telling her about it.

"I think that this is something I might be able to help you out with," he finally said with a sigh that seemed almost of resignation.

Leia was intrigued but determined not to jump to any conclusions just yet, not until she understood what this offer of help might entail.

"How" she asked in a purposefully passive tone.

He leaned forward on the bed, bracing his elbows on his knees. "I have an old friend," he answered, "someone that I trust. She runs a place over on Takodana, knows this galaxy better than anyone. If you're looking for good pilots that you can trust not to sell your little operation here out to the Empire then I reckon Maz will help you."

Now it was her turn to scrutinise him. He _seemed_ genuine but in the short time that she'd known him, Leia had come to understand that a man like Han Solo did nothing for anyone unless there was something in it for himself.

"How much?"

"Huh?" Han frowned, seemingly confused. "What do you mean? How much for what?"

"How much is this going to cost the Alliance, Captain Solo?" Leia asked.

His nostrils flared; she'd annoyed him.

"So it's back to _Captain Solo_ again, huh?" he snapped in response. "You're only formal with me when I've done something to piss you off so what is it this time, Your Worship? You don't want my help, is that it?"

"That depends on what you're hoping to receive in return for your help."

"Well, sweetheart, what are you willing to offer me?" he sneered, looking her up and down in a way that caused her to flush and look away from him. She hated it when he did that, hated that it provoked such an involuntary reaction from her. It felt like a personal weakness, one that only Han could exploit.

They sat in tense silence for a moment and Leia could feel him watching her even while she kept her own gaze fixed on the opposite wall of her quarters. She hated that another discussion between them, one that started out as uncharacteristically civil, had devolved so quickly into sniping at each other, was irritated that she had caused it by suspecting and accusing him of having an ulterior motive.

"Look," he finally said in a voice that was unusually quiet and restrained. "I'm not asking for anything here, alright Princess? It would only take me a couple of days to take care of everything. You could just tell High Command that you came to me about this, appealed to my charitable side and I agreed to go and talk to Maz." He smiled in what Leia thought was intended as self-deprecating. "See, I'll even let you take the credit for this Your Worship, you can tell them it was all your idea."

"Why?"

It took a moment for him to respond. He initially pursed his lips as though biting back a retort that might lead to another argument before he shrugged one shoulder half-heartedly as though he was trying to affect some casualness even while he wanted to be sincere.

"Because it's not a problem," he eventually answered. "And I don't like the thought of you working yourself into the ground trying to impress idiots like Draven when I can handle this for you pretty easily."

Here, Leia thought was the contradiction; both gestures that he'd made tonight, first the air cooler and now this offer of help, were as frustrating and confusing to her as they were selfless and touching. There was no hidden agenda, no ulterior motive, no self-interest; this was the man that she suspected he truly was, the man that was buried beneath all of the bluster and bravado. In that moment, she felt the impulse to embrace and hit him in equal measure, didn't know whether to thank him or grab him by his jacket and just shake him.

"I thought you were desperate to leave," she said quietly. "There's nothing stopping you now."

"There won't be anything stopping me in a couple of days," Han retorted. "Just figured I that I might do one last nice thing for you to remember me by."

Leia quirked an eyebrow at that and he chuckled in response.

"So, what do you say?" he asked. "You trust me to handle this for you?"

She did. Leia knew that she would trust Han even if she _had_ been able to bring herself to hate him, even though she couldn't depend on him not to hurt her later on. It was something she couldn't explain, a trust that was instinctive and implicit.

So she nodded.

Han's expression brightened slightly in response and Leia thought that he seemed almost relieved, as though he may have anticipated that convincing her to accept his help would be more difficult than it had proven.

"Alright then," he said, tapping the palms of his hand rhythmically on his knees and rising to his feet. "I'd better get back to the _Falcon_ then, there's a few more things me and Chewie need to take care of before we get going. I was thinking we'll leave in the morning, get this over with."

"I'll ask Rieekan to authorise everything for you," Leia replied as she too stood up.

"You do that, sweetheart," he smirked. The swagger, it seemed, was back. "And I was thinking that I might ask the kid to tag along with us." At Leia's quizzical look, he continued. "Maz is into all of that Force... _stuff_ that Luke won't shut up about so I figured if she could answer some of his questions about Jedi and whatever the hell else the old man filled his head with, it might get me some peace and quiet."

"I think he'd appreciate that," Leia said gently, aware that Han was motivated far more by Luke's interests in this instance than his own, even if he chose to pretend otherwise.

He was a puzzle that she needed to solve, in whatever time she had left to do so, or she'd spend the rest of her life analysing everything he'd allowed her to know about him and questioning whatever else that he might have otherwise withheld.

It didn't matter that this strange dynamic between them was as frightening as it was intoxicating; Leia knew in that moment, with more clarity than at any other point since they'd met, that she had to find a way to convince him to stay.

"Before I go, there is actually one thing that I want for helping you out," he said in a low voice, snapping her thought process. "One thing you can do for me."

Leia didn't like the sound of that and when he took one small step closer to her, her heart leapt slightly and she felt her body tense as she lifted her eyes to meet his.

"Get some sleep, Princess," he murmured on with a small smile, "you look exhausted."

She laughed, more out of relief than because what he'd said was funny. He winked at her, just as he'd done at the medal ceremony and Leia felt the same unsettling twisting sensation in her stomach now as she had then, before bidding her goodnight and stepping around her, headed for the door.

"Han!"

She was unable to suppress the insane urge to throw caution to the wind, to just ask him to stay.

But the question died in her throat as the sight of his expectant face. And a different thought came to her.

"I want to come with you."

"To Takodana?" he asked and Leia nodded.

One corner of Han's mouth turned downward slightly and, for a fleeting moment, she sensed irritation and wondered what about her desire to join him on his trip had caused it.

"Thought you said you trust me, Your Highness."

"No!" He'd clearly gotten the wrong idea, assumed that her wanting to go with him to Takodana meant that she didn't trust him to handle things in the way they needed to be, and she scrambled to set him straight. "No, Han, that's not it, not at all." She hesitated, trying to find the right explanation to placate him. "I-I just...I think I just need to get away from here for a little while."

He narrowed his eyes and scrutinised her for a moment.

"You sure that's a good idea?" he finally asked.

She shrugged. "Why wouldn't it be?" she replied. "Is this place you're going to dangerous?"

Han laughed. "Sweetheart, let's not pretend that me saying yes to that question would stop you coming." His smile faded and he looked almost pensive. "We both know that you can handle danger just fine."

Leia wondered whether that might be as close to a compliment as she was likely to ever receive from Han Solo. But she had to admit, if only to herself, that she felt some pride at having impressed him with the way she'd handled herself on the Death Star and later during the evacuation from Yavin.

He exhaled heavily. "Well, if you really want to come then I ain't going to stop you," he said nonchalantly. "Clear everything with Rieekan, pack a bag and I guess I'll see you at the _Falcon_ in the morning."

He turned to leave before pausing and glancing over his shoulder. "Night, Leia," he said quietly and then he was gone.

He'd used her name. For the first time since they'd met, Han had called her by her actual name. She didn't know why but it felt strangely significant, like some kind of marker of progress that had been made between them tonight.

* * *

Han Solo had known a lot of women over the course of his life.

He'd liked most of them. There were a few that he hoped to never lay eyes upon again. And there had been one or two that he would admit to having loved.

But none of them, not even the one or two that he'd loved, had ever intrigued him as Leia Organa did.

Since they'd taken off from Drongar, she'd been like a talkative shadow, following him around the ship. When he'd calibrated the pressure gauges that he and Chewie had recently installed in the circuitry bay, she'd sat cross-legged on the deck behind and nattered on about her career in the Senate; when he'd rewired one of the _Falcon's_ damaged compacitors, she'd talked about High Command and all of the issues she had with it; when they'd loaded the washer unit in the galley after dinner, she told him about some of her plans for the future of the Rebellion.

And while she'd talked, Han had listened.

Not to humour her or simply to be polite; he'd listened, _really listened,_ to everything she'd said because he was genuinely interested in everything she'd had to say.

It wasn't as though he was going to be rushing off to take the oath and sign the Alliance pledge now; there was absolutely no chance of that ever happening. They'd touch down back on Drongar just long enough to let her and the kid get off the ship and then he and Chewie were headed straight to Tatooine to settle the debt that had hung over their heads for far too long.

But hearing Leia talk about the Rebellion with such passion, such intensity had stuck a chord with him. He understood now how she'd managed to get herself elected to the Senate before she would have been old enough to vote on most systems. When she spoke, she drew you in without you realising, made you believe that her little revolution actually had a shot of succeeding.

By now, he couldn't deny even to himself that something about this particular young woman had really gotten under his skin. Leia was a fascinating mix of contradictions; strong yet vulnerable, selfless but stubborn, wise beyond her years yet still youthfully naive and idealistic. Han had never met or known another being like her in all of his years of crossing for one corner of the galaxy to another.

He liked her. He knew the way he acted towards her sometimes might make that hard to believe but it was true.

He really liked her. He might even go as far as admitting, if only to himself, that he cared about her.

Han liked and cared about the kid too but Luke was an entirely different proposition to Her Worship; Luke was simple, in a good way. What you saw was what you got, he was a good person with good intentions, all wide-eyed and innocent but you still got the sense that he was a lot tougher and more resourceful than he looked.

Leia, on the other hand, was a challenge.

And there were few things that Han enjoyed more than a good challenge.

The problem was that Leia seemed to regard him as just as much of a challenge as he did her. He could sense it when they got into one of their arguments, when she'd get so riled up that she'd get personal. But he knew, even if she hadn't realised it herself yet, that she wasn't really trying to hurt him with her insults; she was using her own preconceptions to poke at him, to try and provoke him into revealing something about himself that he might otherwise prefer not to. Han guessed that that was something she'd picked up from being involved in politics, the art of getting an opponent to reveal their hand while she kept her own cards close to the chest.

No one, not even Chewie, had gotten the measure of him as quickly and as accurately as Her Worship had. And it unnerved him, at times made him want to keep her at arm's length rather than risk unintentionally playing right into her hands.

But, at the same time, part of the reason he antagonised the princess, provoked her into their little squabbles, was because he knew she needed an outlet, someone she could get angry at and just vent. He could be that for her, could handle it in a way that someone as sensitive as Luke probably couldn't.

And he did it because he was the only person around her who seemed to have noticed how perilously close she was to falling apart.

She wasn't sleeping much, he could tell that just by looking at her. Han doubted she was eating properly either; Luke said that he and Rieekan were trying to make sure that Leia ate at least one meal a day but that she usually had some excuse ready to get out of going to the mess hall with either of them. There'd been a couple of times when Han had noticed her just wandering around the base with a kind of glazed look in her eyes, as though she was a million parsecs away.

He was amazed that Leia had been able to hold herself together for this long given what she'd been through. She put on a brave act but he knew that she was treading a very thin line between self-preservation and all-consuming grief. She'd buried everything, all that she felt about her family and Alderaan, behind the facade of the strong and stoic young leader that she presented to the rest of the galaxy. If that facade cracked, she was primed to emotionally combust.

And Han would be damned before he let someone like Draven prove to be her undoing, not while he was still around to stop that happening.

That was why he was here now, on his way to do the Rebellion one last favour.

But he wasn't going to see Maz for the Alliance's sake, not really, although he'd let Leia think that if it made her feel better to believe that he might just secretly be a revolutionary at heart.

Her Worship needed a victory, something to get High Command off her back and prove that she had something to offer, as much to herself as well as to Draven and the rest of them. And while he was sure that the research she'd been doing when he'd gone to see her last night would probably have found a few decent leads eventually, he also knew that Maz would be able to recommend at least a couple of decent pilots who'd be reliable enough to help the Alliance out.

So he was doing this for her, not the Rebellion.

And then, once it was done, he'd be gone and Leia would need to find a new outlet to keep her emotions in check.

She was strong; that had been clear from the moment that he and Luke had sprung her from her cell on the Death Star. Han just hoped that, at some point, she realised that she didn't always have to be completely infallible for the sake of everyone around her.

The navicomputer beeped, marking that another hour that had passed in their journey and bringing him back to the present. Checking the readouts, Han noted that they were only a few hours from Takodana now. It was the ship's night cycle so everyone else had retired to the crew cabins to sleep; Han had drawn the short straw with Chewie so he was stuck on watch duty.

Han rubbed his eyes and yawned, struggling to stave off the exhaustion that was beginning to weigh heavily.

With all the repairs that he and Chewie had had to do over the past four days, ever since they'd landed on Drongar, he'd barely had time to nap, let along get a proper night's sleep. The _Falcon_ had taken a hell of a lot of damage in the evacuation from Yavin; the shield generator had needed to be repaired, the navicomputer had been knocked offline, the lateral thruster had taken a hit. And then, between fixing all of the major damage, there'd been so much rewiring and fusing to get through, circuitry boards that had needed to be replaced, systems that had had to be rebooted and reprogrammed.

The kid had been good enough to help out. Luke had picked up some mechanical skills back on Tatooine, working on his landspeeder and skyhopper, a lot of which had been transferrable enough that he'd been able to pitch in on the _Falcon,_ handling a few of the minor jobs while Han and Chewie got on with the more urgent tasks.

The only drawback with having Luke help out was that he wouldn't shut up about things that went way over Han's head; the Force, training to be a Jedi, life advice that Ben Kenobi had given him that sounded to Han like absolute nonsense. So he'd had no choice but to assign Luke work that would keep him as far away from Han as possible.

It was either that or kick him off the _Falcon_ entirely.

The only thing worse than having to listen to Luke talk about the Force was having to endure him fawning over Leia.

Han had to admit that the two of them were a pretty good match; they were similar in age, got on well enough already that you'd have thought they'd known each their entire lives, shared the same ideals, had the same revolutionary spirit. It was a good story...The Rebellion figurehead and the hero that had blown up the Death Star...the rebel princess and the rebel pilot. Han figured that it was bound to happen at some point. They were already so comfortable around one another, affectionate, were always disappearing off somewhere to have their private little heart-to-hearts.

He just hoped that when it did happen, he would already be long gone and wouldn't have to bear witness to any of it.

And that made him feel absolutely pathetic.

It wasn't that he thought of Leia in _that_ way; that would be ridiculous. Sure she was beautiful and smart and charismatic and tough and resourceful. And she was the most intriguing woman that Han had ever known, the most challenging being he'd ever met.

But none of that meant that he though of the princess in _that_ way.

After all, he barely knew her.. She was younger than him, could drive him absolutely crazy at times. They came from entirely different backgrounds, had entirely different outlooks on the galaxy, their lives were headed in two completely different directions.

He did feel an unfamiliar sort of protectiveness toward her that he guessed had something to do with how they'd met; he knew enough about Imperial interrogation techniques to intuit that she had to have been put through hell on that battle station, although she'd never shown any inclination of wanting to discuss it with him or, as far as he knew, anyone else. So he reasoned that it was perfectly natural to feel protective of her, that any decent being in his position would feel the same way.

But that was as far as it went, as far as it would ever go.

 _Kest,_ he thought to himself, _I really need to get away from that blasted Rebellion._

Chewie kept needling him, accusing him of going soft since they'd met Luke and Leia and while he'd argued that nothing could be further from the truth, he was starting to think that there might be something to Chewie's observations. And the solution to that was simple: leave, as soon as he possibly could.

He'd hung around longer than he'd ever intended, done more for the Alliance than he'd initially been willing to do. But he'd had a life before he'd firstcrossed paths with the kid back on Tatooine and he was just about ready to get back to it, to put everything that had happened since they'd met behind him and move on.

All that he needed to do now was avoid being subjected to any last-gap recruitment pitches from either of his young passengers in whatever remaining time he had left in their company. Not that his decision to leave could or would be changed even if one of them did try to convince to stick around; he just didn't want to have to deal with that sort of thing

Rising to his feet and stretching, he decided that a cup of strong caf was in order.

Leaving the cockpit and making for the galley, Han grumbled to himself that there would be no drawing straws to decide who stayed up on watch for the return trip to Drongar; Chewie was doing it, whether the Wookie liked it or not.

Entering the main hold, massaging a painful crick in his neck, he stopped dead in his tracks.

The princess was lying curled up on the banquette in the corner, engulfed by the thick woollen blanket she must have dragged out here with her from the cabin she'd retired to earlier. Han could just about make out the curve of her nose amongst some flyaway strands of hair that had come loose from the thick bun she'd tied it in. Moving a little closer, careful not to make any noise that might wake her, Han saw that she appeared to be in a deep sleep; he could hear the slightest hint of a snore and chuckled quietly. _Why was she sleeping out here?_

She looked younger, Han thought, relaxed and unburdened.

He tried to ignore the strange twisting sensation in the pit of own stomach, to no avail.

 _Kest!_

He continued on to the galley, thinking he might pour himself a whiskey; he needed something a hell of a lot stronger than caf now.


	3. Chapter 2

_This is really a chapter in two parts; I wanted everything that happens on Takodana to form one chapter but then I ended up being sidetracked by problems with the other AU I'm writing and then I got an idea for a third AU that I've done a little work on. So, wanting to keep this story moving and get something posted, I've basically cut this chapter in half and what will now be chapter three will really be the start of the relationship that is going to develop early on in this story and will be all Han/Leia interaction._

* * *

 _2_

Leia had thought that she was beginning to make some progress. Starting to get better.

She didn't know what had compelled her to sleep in the main hold, why she'd felt so comfortable there rather than in the cabin she's been offered last night. Leia only knew that she had slept properly, uninterrupted, for the first time since leaving Alderaan, since the Death Star.

And so when she'd awoken, she had dared to let herself hope that she'd taken one small but significant step forward. Let herself hope that she _could_ eventually move on.

But then, as the _Millennium Falcon_ had begun its descent, soared over the boundless green forests, mountain peaks and vast lakes of Takodana, Leia had been struck by how much the planet resembled parts of Alderaan; resembled her home.

For a moment, only for a brief moment, she had allowed herself to indulge in the illusion that she _was_ home. That there was still a home left for her to return to.

And the ache in the pit of her stomach had intensified, she'd felt her composure edge that little bit closer to the brink, to crumbling. Although it had been her idea to come on this trip, she'd begun to feel the stirrings of regret for having done so, to wish that Han had refused to bring her along. Leia felt hopelessly adrift on this ship; she was simply a spare part with nothing to contribute, had too much time on her hands with which to think. And given everything that she was trying to conceal from everyone around her, having _any_ sort of time to think was dangerous.

"Hey, Sweetheart." She felt a gentle hand on her shoulder. "You alright?"

She looked up into Han's face, saw the concern in his eyes, as though he'd somehow intuited everything she was thinking, and felt the mad impulse to do what she hadn't been able to whenever she's been asked that question since the Death Star: be honest. Tell him that no, she wasn't alright, that she was as far from alright as it was possible to be. That she didn't know if she would ever be alright again, _could_ ever be alright again. That she was scared that continuing this act, pretending to be alright, might soon tear her apart.

But she couldn't.

So instead, Leia nodded. "Of course," she replied in as steady a voice as she could manage. "I'm fine."

Han didn't look convinced; there was something about the way he narrowed his eyes that unnerved, made her feel that he was seeing through her act and might say as much.

"Come on then," he finally said. "We're heading out."

Suppressing an audible sigh of relief that he hadn't pursued the matter further, she rose from the navigator's chair and followed him out of the cockpit and into the main hold where Chewie and Luke were waiting. They'd landed ten minutes earlier and Leia had allowed the others to get on with shutting down the _Falcon_ while she'd remained in the cockpit to gather her thoughts.

"So, Han," Luke said while Leia slid into the banquette to sit next to him. "How does someone like you become friends with someone that lives in a castle?"

Han chuckled as he worked at the engineering station. "What's that supposed to mean, Kid? You think a guy like me couldn't have high-class friends?"

Luke looked uneasy for a moment, as though he was worried that he had offended Han.

"Look, just relax Kid, alright?" Han continued. "Don't let this place's appearance fool you, it's the most popular port in this part of the galaxy. Good place to find work so long as you don't mind that most of it ain't exactly legal."

"So there are criminals here?" cut in Leia.

"In a manner of speaking," replied Han, finishing up his task and turning to face them both. "But not dangerous criminals; Maz is very particular about that. It's mostly just smugglers and pilots, either looking for a job or wanting to disappear for a while. So as long as you two stick with me and Chewie, there'll be no problems."

"I thought you said this place was safe," said Luke. "That we could trust this friend of yours."

"This place _is_ safe," Han replied exasperatedly. "And it'll stay safe so long as you're with me and Chewie Just keep both your heads down, don't talk to anyone unless they talk to you first and, whatever you do, _don't stare at anything_."

"Why?"

"'Cause it's not polite," answered Han simply. "Now, so long as we're all in agreement that I'm in charge here-" Chewie interrupted him with a low growl from the circuitry bay and Han waved his partner off apologetically. "Alright, that me _and_ Chewie are in charge here, we can go and get this over with."

Leia and Luke murmured their agreement, Leia somewhat resentfully, and Han led the way out of the _Falcon._

They'd landed close to the shore of a massive lake, on the outskirts of dense woodland. The battlements of the castle that was their destination rose imposingly above the tree line, only a short walk away.

While they waited for Chewie to activate the _Falcon's_ security system, Leia enjoyed the feeling of the slight breeze on her skin, such a welcome relief from the stifling humidity that she and the rest of the Alliance were having to endure on Drongar. The scent of pine hung in the air, intermingling with the perfume of the planet's native flora. She could hear the lake lapping against the rocks on the nearby shoreline and it transported her mind back to summers on Alderaan, spent at the lake retreat on the Apalis Coast when she would like awake at night and listen to the sounds of the water drifting in through the open windows.

"Nice, huh?"

Han had come to stand beside her, was smiling at her in a way that made Leia's stomach leap a little. "It's beautiful," she murmured..

"Been a while since I was last here," said Han, looking out across the lake toward the mountains in the distance; Leia thought that he looked strangely pensive. "You forget sometimes how quiet some places in the galaxy are."

"You don't strike me as the kind of man that enjoys the quiet."

Han laughed and then smirked at her. "I'm full of surprises, Your Worship," he replied. "Very complex."

 _That might just be the truest thing I've ever heard him say,_ thought Leia.

"Hey...Han?" Leia ducked her head and looked away when Luke interrupted. "What are all these other ships doing here?" He gestured at the array of spacecraft that had been docked on the fields around them.

"Enjoying Maz's famous hospitality," said Han. "Like I said, this place is very popular, 'specially with pilots working the trade routes between the Inner and Outer Rims. Helps that the Empire doesn't have any patrols in this region either."

They walked in relative silence around the edge of the forest until they reached a wide path that led to the castle. When they reached the large courtyard, Leia took in the sight of the hundreds of flags and banners that hung over their heads. She recognised some of the insignias and emblems that adorned them, knew that they represented armies and organisations of the past that she'd read about in her studies of galactic history. But the majority of them were completely unfamiliar to her.

They stopped at the front door and Han turned again to face her and Luke.

"Alright, remember what I said...'specially about not staring at anything."

The door slid open and the first thing that registered with Leia was the smell, a heady mix of stale tobacco and alcohol. The hall they'd entered was large and dimly-lit; a strange haze seemed to hang in the air above the heads of the patrons, most of whom were congregated around tables in small groups, either conspiring amongst themselves or playing various games that Leia didn't recognise. In the corner, a rather harassed-looking man was pouring drinks at a small bar, handing them out to rather ancient looking tray-bearing service droids to distribute.

She tried to note all of the different species here; a group of Rodians were gathered around a nearby table, playing some sort of card game where it seemed the loser in each hand received a slap around the head from each of their cohorts; a dour-looking Abednedo was leaning against the stone wall, nursing a glass of blue-coloured liquid that appeared to be emitting some kind of thick grey smoke; a clan of diminutive Aleen were chattering away loudly, convened in chairs around a large, roaring fireplace; a crowd near the bar were watching and cheering on what appeared to be an arm-wrestling contest between an Iakaru and a Gran.

It was one of the most bizarre sights she'd ever seen. Given her political and royal upbringing, Leia had obviously spent a lot of time around beings of different species but predominantly in professional scenarios; sessions of the Senate or formal functions. She'd engaged with them socially as well but only with contemporaries, beings that were of a similar standing and status as herself.

This was so starkly different to that, so disorganised, loud and raucous. She felt like she was almost getting a glimpse into Han's life before she knew him; the Senate was her realm, this was Han's. This was the type of environment in which he worked and seemingly thrived, where she sensed that he would probably feel most at ease.

What he'd return to if he followed through on his determination to leave the Alliance.

"Hey!"

Han had thrown his arm out to grab Luke around the shoulder, stopping him just as he'd seemed ready to wander off. "What did I tell you back on the _Falcon?"_ Han hissed angrily. "What did we agree?"

Luke shrugged him off. "I'm not going to get in any trouble," he said sullenly. "I'm just going to look around while you find your friend."

"Not alone you're not," Han said. "Chewie, keep an eye on him."

The two of them began to wind their way through the tables; Leia noticed several of the castle's patrons casting somewhat nervous glances in Chewie's direction as he passed them. She guessed that a Wookie might not be a very common sight, even in establishments such as this.

"Looks like it just me and you then, Sweetheart," Han said, one corner of his mouth curving upward in a small smile. "You want a drink?"

Leia nodded and kept close to Han's side as she followed him around the edge of the room until they reached the bar. None of the available refreshments looked familiar. Not that Leia could claim to have any sort of knowledge of different brands of alcohol; she knew some of the wines that had been produced on the vineyards of Alderaan but thought it unlikely that any of them would be on offer here. She also only knew of one type of whiskey, Rothbard's Vintage, an Alderaanian brand that could only be purchased from a distillery in Juranno. It had been her father's favourite whiskey, the one he'd enjoyed a glass of at the end of each day .

"Not sure any of this stuff will be to your tastes, Princess," said Han. "They've got juice though...you ever had golzanberry juice?"

"No, but that will be fine," Leia replied shortly. She suddenly felt like a child tagging along with a grown up, self conscious of the age difference between herself and Han and irritated at him for making her so aware of it. She had to fight back the petulant urge to remind him that she was an adult, had done and been through more things in her nineteen years than most beings three times her age, that she had and could drink alcohol if she so wished.

But she had to admit, grudgingly, that the juice was among the nicer things she'd tasted in some time; perfectly refreshing but not too sweet. She sipped it contentedly in silence, watching Han as he ordered a Corellian whiskey for himself. His attention was on the hall, his eyes darting around the various groups of beings gathered around it and Leia guessed that he was searching for his friend.

Free to study him for a moment, Leia thought that his eyes looked darker now. She'd noticed that their colour seemed to depend on and change with his mood; they tended to be darker when he was angry or worried, as he had been when they'd first met on the Death Star. If he was happy, which he seemed to be whenever he was teasing Leia, they would be flecked with gold; if he was irritated, his eyes seemed to almost tinge with green.

Her father had once told her that the eyes were windows to a being's soul, an old political adage that Leia had taken to heart. There was some truth to it she mused; if you looked intently enough, she thought that you could begin to glean something of the mind that lay behind another's eyes. But Han was an exception to that, a frustratingly blank canvas

So much about him hinted at a past he seemingly had no interest in divulging to her or anyone else. The Corellian Bloodstripe he'd been awarded, scar on his chin and broken nose were all relics of the stories he wouldn't tell, bating her curiosity and taunting her with his reticence. Even the presence of Chewie, the unusual partnership of human and Wookie, piqued her curiosity; there were just _so many_ things about him that she wanted to know.

"Now, what did I tell you about not staring?"

His voice broke her out of her reverie and it took a few moments for Leia to realise that he'd noticed her studious analysis of him, was taking great pleasure in having done so if the smirk on his face was anything to go by.

"You're blushing, Sweetheart," Han gloated, inching fractionally closer to her. "So, what were you thinking about that's got you all hot and bothered, huh? Why are you staring at me like that?"

Leia suddenly felt panicked, vulnerable under his teasing gaze. She'd stood up in front of the Senate, protested vociferously against Imperial tyranny without any fear or a shred of nerves, and yet this man, this tactless and belligerent smuggler, could somehow cause her to lose all of her composure. He had this strange power to fluster her with the merest glance, to make her feel out of her depth in his presence; it was like going into a debate with an opponent who had the unfair advantage of having seen the questions beforehand while Leia remained hopelessly in the dark.

Withering retorts died in her throat, leaving only a truth that Leia would never confess to him, not now and not ever; she was fascinated by him, by all of the secrets that he guarded so steadfastly.

But then his expression changed, his eyes narrowed and darkened with an intensity that she hadn't seen in them before, not even when they had been fighting for their lives aboard the Death Star or back on Yavin. And Leia had a horrible sense that realisation was dawning on Han, that he'd done what she couldn't when she analysed him; seen in her eyes everything that she didn't want to say.

"You know, I was just wondering yesterday when you'd be back here to darken my door Han Solo."

To Leia's great relief, the interruption broke the awkward tension between herself them. Seemingly with some reluctance, Han turned away from her, leaning back and bracing his elbows on the bar to address the being that had spoken to him.

"Well it's been a long time," he said with his customary smirk. "I've missed you, Maz."

When Leia had deduced back on Drongar that the friend of Han's they were coming to see was female, she'd imagined that they'd meet an attractive and alluring woman, someone tall and charismatic and worldly; in short, the type of female she'd imagined that men like Han Solo associated with whenever she'd given any thought to his life before they'd met.

Maz was a total contrast to whatever it was that Leia had envisioned or expected.

She was diminutive, probably a little over a foot shorter than Leia, and was of a species that Leia had never seen before. Maz's skin was a deep orange in colour and wrinkled around her eyes and mouth. She was dressed simply in a green woollen jumper, a brown vest, loose-fitting trousers and a cap; a pair of goggles were perched atop her head.

She stood before them, hands placed on her hips, giving Han an appraising look.

"I wish I could say the same about you," she replied to him. "But whenever you come here, it usually means that trouble is close on your tail."

Han raised his right hand, as though taking a pledge. "There's no trouble this time, I promise...I actually have some business that I need your help with," he said, inclining his head in Leia's direction.

Maz stepped forward and put forth her hand to take Leia's. "You look like a sweet young thing," she said solemnly. "Take my advice, child: don't listen to a word he says and get away from him now, before he drags you into whatever mess he's gone and gotten himself involved in."

"Hey!" said Han indignantly as Leia tried to stifle her own amusement.

"I'll keep that advice in mind," she replied politely. "But we really are both here because we'd like to ask for your help."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah, it is," answered Han, stepping forward to stand alongside Leia. "But it's not the kind of business we want to discuss here so if there's somewhere a little more quiet we could go and talk..."

Maz looked intrigued. "You'd better follow me then," said and beckoned to a burly Veknoid that was haphazardly hurling darts at a wooden scoreboard that hung on the wall. "Gilaspo, go and tell the Wookie at the droid ball table that Han is with me. And, for the love of the Gods, tell that young boy with the Wookie to stop staring at that Devaronian unless he wants to leave here with less limbs than he arrived with."

Leia could hear Han muttering quietly next to her, cursing Luke. "So Maz," he said, "who's the Veknoid? You finally gotten over Chewie?"

"Don't be absurd," replied Maz with a wry grin. "You know how fond I am of that Wookie. The Veknoid is Gilaspo Rut. Real hard-luck case, well-meaning enough but just can't stay out of trouble...I'm trying to help him get back on his feet and clear some debts so I give him some piloting work when I can."

"As charitable as ever," Han mumbled as he and Leia followed Maz out of the hall and down a narrow, dimly lit corridor. "So, how are things Maz? This place still keeping you busy?"

"More so than usual," sighed Maz. "We're living in strange times, Han...very strange. Everyone seems to be running from _something_ now, everyone has _something_ to hide."

She led them into a small chamber and directed them both to sit around an ancient-looking table while she busied herself with locking the door. Leia took in a painting that adorned the wall, one that depicted a great battle between two armies that both wielded lightsabers, like the one that Luke had.

"It is said that this castle is built on the site of a great battle between the Jedi and the Sith, more than a millennium ago," Maz explain, noticing what had caught Leia's attention. "This place is very strong in the Force... _very_ strong."

"And I've brought someone with me who wants to talk to you about that," interrupted Han. "But me and the princess aren't interested in all that stuff."

"Princess? You're running around with royalty now, Han?"

"Something like that." In her peripheral vision, Leia saw him cast a glance in her direction before continuing. "Maz, this is Leia."

Maz squinted. "Leia Organa? Of Alderaan?"

Leia nodded and braced herself for the sympathetic looks, the expression of condolences for all that she'd lost. It had become something of a routine occurrence with the Rebellion and Leia had fallen back on all that she'd learned during her steep education in political etiquette to maintain her composure, to master polite acceptance and move the conversation along to a new subject that didn't carry the risk of breaking her emotional resolve.

But Maz didn't respond at all in the way that Leia had expected.

"Alright then," she said after a brief silence in which she'd simply narrowed her eyes and scrutinised Leia closely. "What is this business that you two have come here to discuss with me?"

* * *

Her Worship really did have quite a smile.

Han had seen her smile plenty since they'd met, even though she really didn't have a lot to smile about given everything she'd been put through of late. And, being that Leia was both a royal and a politician, he'd noticed that she was very good at putting on a fake smile when required, convincing enough that he was either the only person who recognised when she was doing it or everyone else was just too polite or intimidated by the princess to call her on it.

But when she smiled, _really_ smiled, the kind that reached her eyes...

Han gave his head a little shake and took another drink of his whiskey. He wasn't going to start getting starry-eyed over a pretty smile; he wasn't Luke for kest's sake. He'd seen plenty of pretty smiles in his lifetime, had enjoyed the satisfaction of being responsible for a lot of them.

And, given that this trip had been his idea and suggestion, he couldn't help but feel a little responsible for Leia's bright and vivid and _real_ smile now.

They'd return to Drongar with half a dozen names of pilots and smugglers that Maz had put forth as reliable and trustworthy enough to run supplies for the Alliance. It wasn't a total solution to the problem that Leia had been tasked with solving but it was a good start and would be a small victory for her in winning over the sceptics on High Command. And that contributed more to Han's sense of accomplishment than knowing he'd done one more favour for the Rebellion.

Now Leia and Luke were huddled around a table in the corner of the main hall, no doubt discussing whatever Maz had told the kid about the Force in the little meeting that the two of them had just had. That was one conversation that Han wanted no part in; he'd heard more than enough about the blasted Force from Kenobi on the flight from Mos Eisley to Alderaan...or what was _supposed_ to have been the flight to Alderaan.

So he'd excused himself, retrieved a whiskey from the bar and retreated into a corner of the hall. Chewie was making the most of his opportunity to win some money at the sabaac table, though Han also suspected that the Wookie was doing his utmost to steer clear of Maz while they were here.

Leaning against a stone pillar, he watched as Leia burst into sudden laughter at something that Luke had said and laid her hand on the kid's shoulder. The two of them looked kind of cosy; Luke certainly looked as though he was enjoying the opportunity to command Her Worship's undivided attention, Realising that he'd been involuntarily been grinding his teeth as he watched them, Han gulped down a healthy amount of his whiskey in irritation.

"You know," said Maz, appearing at Han's elbow, "I've known you long enough now that I really shouldn't be surprised by anything that you manage to get yourself caught up in. But I really didn't think I'd see the day when Han Solo worked with the Rebel Alliance, never mind travel with a princess and a Jedi."

Han decided to ignore her comment about him working with the Rebellion; he had had more than enough of having to correct anyone who made the mistaken assumption that he was working with the Rebel Alliance.

"The kid ain't no Jedi," he replied. "I don't remember much about the Jedi but I'm pretty sure it takes more than a week to become one."

"That boy is stronger with the Force than any being I've encountered since the Purge," Maz insisted. "His father was one of the most powerful Jedi to have ever lived; you must have heard of Anakin Skywalker?"

"Can't say I have," muttered Han. "I was ten when the Jedi were wiped out, Maz, I was too worried about when I was next gonna eat and finding somewhere warm to sleep at the time to remember any of their names."

"Well, you will have heard of Skywalker even if you don't remember it...that boy is very powerful, he just isn't aware of it yet."

"Kest, Maz, I hope you didn't go telling him that."

Maz chuckled. "His head is already in the stars," she said quietly. "He's got big dreams, _huge_ ambitions." Her expression shifted to one of concern. "Han, if the Empire hear that there's another Skywalker, they're going to come after him; the Sith won't risk him fulfilling his destiny, risk him becoming a Jedi if that is what he's determined to do...he'll need your help if he's going to stand any chance."

Han was afraid that she'd say something like that, dump responsibility for the kid's wellbeing on his shoulders. But he hadn't signed up to be anyone's guardian; he and Chewie had their own problems to take care of, the last thing they needed was to take on another one. And if Maz was right, if Luke really was the son of some famous Jedi, then Han didn't know what he could do to keep him out of the Empire's crosshairs.

"The girl is something special too," Maz continued, breaking Han's troubled line of thought. "She has a power all of her own...but she's close to falling apart."

"Is that really a surprise?" asked Han shortly. "She's lost everything: family, friends, her home, her career. And that damn Rebellion sees her more like a symbol than a person, she's got military people on her back making her feel like she's got nothing to offer, she's not sleeping, she's probably barely eating-"

"Did she tell you all of this?" interjected Maz.

"No, but you don't exatly have to look very hard to see it," said Han. "Then again, sometimes I tihink I'm the only one that does see it. She won't talk about anything...I don't think she can yet."

Maz nodded, turning her attention to Luke and Leia, watching them as they whispered and laughed together. To anyone that didn't know them, they'd look like any other young couple. But there was something about them that Maz could sense but not determine, an underlying connective thread that neither seemed aware of yet.

Glancing at Han, noting the way that his eyes had darkened as he too watched them, Maz detected something in him that she hadn't before. Han Solo was a supremely complex being but she'd never known him to be a jealous man.

Yet envy was radiating from him now, permeating the air around them.

And Maz realised that her initial suspicions were correct, that what she'd intuited the moment she'd walked into the main hall earlier in the day and seen the princess' gaze fixed on Han was indeed true. It surprised and amused her, to come across two people of such intensity who were so drawn to one another and yet so clearly couldn't understand why, couldn't comprehend that the reason was the most simple and most natural one in the galaxy.

But she knew better than to voice any of these thoughts; she'd only just met the princess but she knew Han well enough to be sure that he would tell her that she was crazy, that she'd read the entire situation wrong.

A more subtle approach was needed.

"You know, she needs you too," she said tentatively, primed for Han to become defensive. "Not in the same way as the boy does...but perhaps more."

Han shot her a warning glance and turned away, moving to sit in one of the empty chairs by the fireplace. Undeterred by his evasiveness, Maz followed and sat beside him, though she knew to tread carefully now having obviously hit a little too close to home in her implication.

"You let me tell her stories about you, about your past," she said, nudging Han's arm with her shoulder. "That's not like you...you usually won't let anyone know _anything_ about you, never mind someone you've known for barely more than a week."

It was true. Han was the most reticent man she'd ever known and yet earlier he'd sat by and just watched, a broad grin on his face, while Leia laughed at all of Maz's accounts of the ridiculous messes that he and Chewie had gotten themselves into over the years.

"Yeah, cause those stories were making her laugh," Han snapped. "Hell, if anyone needs to laugh right now it's Her Worship." He leaned forward in his seat, closer to Maz and continued to speak in a lower tone. "Don't go thinking there's anything going on here, alright? I get enough of that crap from Chewie, only he thinks he's being funny when he says it. You're seeing something that ain't there, you got that?"

"Not really," sighed Maz in answer. "But I suppose it's none of my business."

"That's right, it's not." Han ran a weary hand across his chin, staring into the effervescent embers of the fireplace, casting him in an orange glow. "Look, Maz, I didn't sign up to be anyone's guardian or best friend here. I barely know Leia...I barely know Luke either and I don't want anything bad to happen to either of 'em. But in case you've forgotten, I've got my own problems to deal with."

"No, I haven't forgotten about that," Maz replied. "In fact, I've been hearing quite a bit about those problems. I presume you haven't told them how serious this debt of yours is?" she asked, jerking her head backward in the direction of Luke and Leia.

"Course not," hissed Han. "You think I'm stupid enough to run my mouth about this to anyone." He drank what was left of his whiskey and grimaced slightly at the burning sensation it caused in his chest. "So, what have you heard?"

"That you've got a lot more problems than you did a week ago," Maz answered. "Han, _why_ did you ever get involved with Jabba? I _warned_ you this would happen."

"I've been asking myself that question a lot lately," Han groused. "Look, I've got the money now, it's on the _Falcon_ , all I've got to do is get it to Jabba. And I will, soon as I've gotten the kid and the princess back to the Alliance." He affected a forced expresion of self-confident bravado. "You know me, Maz...I'll take care of everything."

Maz scoffed. "You'll be lucky if you set foot on Tatooine without getting shot at if what I've heard is true. And who's to say that the credis you have will by enough? Jabba is probably raising your debt by the thousands every day."

She glanced behind them to ensure that none of the hall's other patrons were nearby, listening to their conversation.

"Han," she whispered, "he's going to have you killed, whether you pay him back or not."

Han couldn't mask the twinge of fear, the dawning realisation and consequent panic that this was one mess he might not be able to talk his way out of, that this time there'd be no miraculous escape that he might one day regale a princess with just to see her laugh, to see the worries and concerns she carried with her fade away, if only for a moment. But he also knew that even if he could, he wouldn't have changed any of the decisions he'd made or actions he'd taken since he was hired by that crazy old man and wide-eyed farm boy back in Mos Eisley.

"I guess I'll just have to take my chances then, hope my luck holds out," he replied tonelessly. "But I'd rather face up to Jabba and try to settle things with him than stick around with the Alliance and wait to get wiped out by the Empire. Either way, sounds like I'm a dead man walking, right?"

Maz didn't answer. She simply reached out and patted Han gently on his shoulder, commiserating with him and hoping against hope that this scoundrel, who was luckier than any other being she'd known in her thousand years, would surprise her just one more time.

Neither of them realised that Leia was standing just behind them, hidden in the shadows cast by the dying fireplace, had heard the end of their conversation.

Without a word, desperate to be alone, she slipped out of the hall.


	4. Chapter 3

_The premise of this AU is obviously what would have happened had the Han/Leia relationship begun far earlier than it did in the OT; I hope this doesn't seem too early in the timeline. The films are being shown on repeat here to mark the 40th anniversary and watching ESB in particular, how this relationship plays out in it, makes writing this AU a particularly daunting task. That film really is perfect for me.  
_

 _Either way, there are some pitfalls and challenges to come in the chapters ahead._

 _There is kind of a weird inspiration for the Corellian music mentioned in this chapter, or at least my idea of what it may sound like; if anyone has been to Walt Disney World, you've probably know about the Tower of Terror and on that ride they play music from the 30's and 40's as part of the theming. One particular song, I Can't Get Started by Bunny Berigan, stuck in my mind and the scene in the second part of this chapter pretty much formed in my mind when I was standing in line, listening to that song last year._

 _The plan is for the next chapter to take place from Han's perspective and focus on the fallout from what happens in this part; chapter 5 will then focus on Leia's reaction. Chapter 4 will probably be posted at some point next week, for now I want to focus on the next two chapters of my other AU The Rogue and the Revolutionary, and then return to this one._

* * *

 _3_

The same question had revolved around Leia's head since she'd left the castle: _why didn't he tell me?_

She'd wandered far enough along the shoreline of the lake that she could no longer hear any of the music or raucous revelry emanating from Maz's residence. Then she'd removed her boots and socks, rolled her plain, standard-issue trousers up to her knees and waded into the shallows, allowing herself to breifly indulge in the fantasy that she was back at the retreat on Lake Apalis. And, for the first time since she'd lost Alderaan, thinking about her home didn't cause her any pain; instead, it brought a sense of comfort that Leia sorely needed now.

She liked it here on Takodana. Not necessarily because of its similarities to Alderaan but because it was untroubled by war or politics. It had the feeling of a sanctuary, an island of calm amidst the ocean of chaos that was now sweeping across the galaxy.

Leia would immerse herself back into that chaos with a renewed vigour given that this venture to meet with Maz had been a successful one. Aside from her initial feelings of trepidation when they'd landed that morning, the trip had been very enjoyable but as it drew to a close, she was unable to focus on little else besides Han and Chewie's imminent departure from her life, the realisation that it was now very close at hand.

And when they left, there was no likelihood that she would ever see either of them again.

She had known that Han had some sort of debt that he needed to repay, he'd said as much when he'd demanded his monetary reward from the Rebellion for his part in rescuing her from the Death Star. But he'd been so casual about it, made it seem like some sort of occupational hazard that he was used to having to deal with and would resolve easily.

But the reality of Han's situation was clearly far more dire than he had allowed her or anyone else to know.

Leia has sensed that the conversation between him and Maz was one that she was not meant to overhear and she'd hesitated before approaching them. But, regretfully, curiosity had won out over good judgement.

She thought now that everything could have been so much easier had she not been so determined to see beyond his act of the emotionally detached mercenary, if she'd simply accepted all of Han's bravado and allowed him to simply slip out of her life as he'd initially seemed so determined to do.

Instead, Leia had cared about him enough to put herself in a position to be hurt yet again.

And, though she knew it was ridiculously irrational, Leia felt betrayed by him. It was uncharacteristically immature and overly dramatic on her part but she was angry with Han for not telling her the truth, for not trusting her enough to divulge the real reason why he was so determined to leave the Rebellion; if he had, Leia might have understood him a little better from the beginning.

But instead he'd given her reason to mistakenly hope that she could convince him to stay with the Rebellion.

Leia needed the anger she now felt toward Han, clung to it desperately. The only alternative to it was a intense feeling of impending bereavement that she couldn't understand and didn't think she could justify for someone that she barely knew.

It was impossible to ignore the somewhat sinister irony that the man who refused to commit to the Rebellion in part because he thought it a suicidal cause was seemingly marked for death himself.

Han, it would appear, was as doomed as he argued the Alliance to be.

It made his insistence on leaving all the more perplexing in Leia's mind. She couldn't understand why rushing off to confront a gangster that wanted him dead was more preferable to Han than remaining with the Alliance with people who valued and cared about him, who would do whatever they could to keep him and Chewie safe. But risking death so that he could go on gambling and conning his way across the galaxy seemingly appealed more to Han than friendship and camaraderie, than a real and worthwhile cause.

The moment she heard the crunch of heavy footsteps on the pebble-strewn shore, Leia knew that it was Han who had noticed her absence from the castle and come looking for her. She'd hoped that it would be Luke, ready to offer her a sympathetic ear and who wouldn't press her with questions about her current emotional state that she really didn't want to answer.

Han was going to present a far more challenging proposition than she wanted to contend with in that moment.

Rather than acknowledge his presence, Leia simply closed her eyes and remained standing with her back to him. She tried to centre herself, focus on the chill of the water against her skin and the rhythmic birdsong that cried out from somewhere in the distance. But Leia couldn't ignore the tension than now hung in the air, tension that she had noticed always seemed to arise whenever she and Han were in each other's company; she supposed that it was a consequence of their tendency to argue.

Not that they'd argued on this trip; Leia had spent more time in Han's company since leaving Drongar than she had Luke's and she couldn't recall a cross word being exchanged between them. He still teased her, called her his aggravating nicknames, but their conversations had nonetheless been pleasantly companionable.

Thanks to Maz's stories, she'd learned things about him; Leia now knew that Han had been something of a swoop racing prodigy in his youth and that he and Maz had met several years earlier when Han had sought refuge on Takodana after he'd incurred the wrath of a Klatooinian crime lord he'd been smuggling for. She'd laughed at the stories, stored them away in her mind to fill in some small gaps in the puzzle that was Han Solo.

That puzzle would now ultimately remain incomplete.

They stood in silence for a moment; Leia could hear Han kick the toe of his boot against the ground, the subsequent small splashes as the scattered pebbles hit the surface of the water. Eventually he sighed and Leia waited for him to end their standoff.

"So what's with the disappearing act Your Worshipfulness?" he asked. "The kid finally pushed you over the edge with all his talk about the Force and Jedi, huh?"

Leia bit back a sharp retort, irritated that he so readily resorted to attempts at humour. It was simpler now to ignore him, hope that in doing so he would lose patience and storm off.

"Y'know, for someone who's so good at giving orders, you're terrible at following them," he continued. "I take my eye off you for one minute and you run off; it's a good thing I know you can handle yourself or I might have been worried about you, Princess."

 _Just ignore him,_ Leia mentally told herself. _Ignore him and he'll go away, don't give him the satisfaction of knowing that he's gotten to you again._

Han was seemingly in no mood to simply give up and walk away however. Leia could hear him step into the water, feel him come to stand beside her. Though her own eyes were still closed, she could sense that his were fixed on her profile; she folded her arms tightly across her chest, loath to let him see that his close proximity had caused her to involuntarily tremble.

 _It's not because of him,_ she scolded herself. _It's because the water is cold, it has nothing to do with Han._

"Look, Leia, I get it," he said in a sombre tone that she hadn't heard him use before - _he's using my name again,_ Leia thought, _he must be serious -_ "I get that coming here has to be tough on you...guess I should have thought about it before we left Drongar but I know that this place must remind you of...well, you know."

Clearly he was more observant than she'd given him credit for.

Leia had sensed that Han had deduced why she'd been so shaken when they'd landed that morning, had realised that Takodana's aesthetic similarities to Alderaan had shaken her. But he was mistaken in his belief that that was what was troubling her now.

"I like being here," she murmured. "It's calming."

Han nodded. "It can be," he agreed. "You don't seem calm though...something's bothering you."

Leia jerked in surprise when she felt him gently place his hand on her shoulder and, upon opening her eyes, she saw Han recoil.

"Easy, Sweetheart," he snapped.

As Leia glared at him in annoyance, Han braced his hands on his hips and shook his head in what appeared to be exasperation.

"Fine, if you don't want to talk then you don't have to," he said. "But I can't leave you out here alone so just come back to the castle with me. We'll let Chewie and the kid finish up their card game and then we'll all go back to the _Falcon_ and get some sleep, alright?"

"I don't want to go back to the castle," Leia replied. "I just want to be alone."

"Aren't you alone enough as it is back with the Rebellion?"

Leia turned to face him, curious as to what he meant by that.

"It's just, you're so wrapped up in work and responsibility that you shut everything else out," Han elaborated, taking her cue to go on. "We've had a good time here, right? So why be alone when you were obviously enjoying yourself earlier?"

"You really don't understand me as well as you think you do," Leia hissed.

"And you're not holding yourself together half as well as you think you are," Han countered. "Either I'm the only one that sees it or I'm the only one who isn't scared to call you out on it, Your Highness."

"You're being ridiculous," snapped Leia. "Just go away Han, do what you've been threatening to do all along and just leave."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Leia made to turn and walk away; she had no idea where she might go, her only thought was to put as much distance between herself and Han as possible. But before she could take a step, Han reached out and caught her by her wrist. It wasn't a particularly strong grip; if she'd wanted to escape it, Leia didn't think that he would have put up any resistance. But the intensity with which he was now looking at her caused her to renege on her initial intention to flee.

"Look, I don't want to upset you," Han said, quietly and conciliatory. "But you can't just go on pretending that you're fine." He placed both of his hands on her shoulders now and this time, Leia did not pull away. "It's okay to be upset about what happened, Leia, no one is going to think less of you for it...least of all me."

He really was convinced that it was her grief for Alderaan that had caused Leia to seek solace in solitude tonight. And she knew that it would be easier to simply allow him to continue to believe that; it wasn't as though her grief wasn't an interminable and agonising ache, one that no amount of condolences or counsel could even begin to ease.

But then, she reasoned, she'd simply be guilty of doing the very thing that she was so angry at Han for: concealing the truth, taking the easy way out of a situation in which she could really, finally be honest about how she felt.

"Do you really want to know what's bothering me? Why I want to be alone?"

Han nodded and Leia steeled herself.

"It bothers me that people I care about don't trust me enough to be honest with me." She took a deep breath. "I'm _always_ upset about Alderaan, Han, but I am dealing with it as best I can, in the _only_ way that I can. So I don't need _you_ to lecture me on appropriate ways of coping, understood?"

Han withdrew his gentle hold of her shoulders and took a step back from her and Leia could see that he was now struggling to keep his temper in check, resisting the urge to retaliate with one of his typical taunts or verbal barbs. But she didn't want to talk about Alderaan any more with him, didn't think she _could_ talk about Alderaan.

"You know, you really care too much about what other people think," Han muttered.

"Is that so?"

"Yeah, it is." He began to walk back toward the shoreline and Leia noticed that the water had barely reached to halfway up his shins where they'd stood, whereas it had been almost at her knees; sometimes it seemed that even the simplest of things conspired to make her feel small in his presence, out of her depth when faced with his force of character.

"And whose opinions is it that I care too much about?" she asked, beginning to follow him. Now that they'd begun this conversation, she was unwilling to simply allow him to walk away in case she was unable to work up the nerve again to say what she wanted to now.

"High Command," Han answered. "That's the problem here, right? You've been with the Rebellion for five minutes, wanna be involved in everything, and you're mad that they won't let you."

"That's not it at all," Leia replied, amazed that he could have misread her confession so drastically. "Something like that couldn't upset me, it would only make me more determined to prove myself. But this has nothing to do with High Command."

"Well then what is it?" He picked up a stone and skimmed it across the surface of the lake. Leia watched it bounce upon the top of the water until it vanished in the darkness and her mind was momentarily transported back to years earlier, watching her father do the same thing on the shores of Lake Aldera.

"Come on, Your Worship," prompted Han. "Who are you annoyed at this time? It has to be me, right? Not that I ever thought I'd hear you admit that you cared about me Sweetheart, but the kid ain't capable of not being honest with you so it can't be him. So what is it I've done now, huh?"

His flippancy sent a flicker of rage coursing through Leia but she did not submit to the temptation to snipe at him. Admitting that she did care about Han gave him yet more ammunition with which to antagonise her but it wasn't as though he would remain a part of her life for much longer to do so.

"You decided that you couldn't trust me, or anyone else, with the truth of why you want to leave the Rebellion," she answered quietly. "You couldn't be honest about it, you had to pretend that there was something better out there for you than us, than the Alliance."

It took him a moment to realise just what Leia meant, that she'd eavesdropped on him and Maz, and to react. But when he did, it wasn't in the way that Leia had expected he would.

First he smirked in the smug way that was typical of him. Then he chuckled but it was not a pleasant sort of laugh; it sounded bitter, as though he knew he'd been caught in the midst of his failed ruse and was ready to lash out as a consequence.

"I should have expected you to listen in on something that had nothing to do with you," he said. "Must be the politician in you, right? Sneaking around, sticking your nose where it doesn't belong in other people's business."

Leia resented the negative aspersion he'd cast on her career though she couldn't dispute that she had elected to listen in on a private conversation. But she hadn't done it because of some egregious need on her part to know and interfere in Han's life; she'd been curious, concerned for him given that the tone of his conversation with Maz had so obviously been serious. So she could understand and accept his anger, safe in the knowledge that her intentions hadn't been underhanded in any way, though she doubted that there was anything she could say to convince Han of that.

He stepped toward her, pointing his finger accusingly in her face.

"Let's get one thing straight, Princess," he growled. "What I do with my life has nothing to with you, got that? I got no interest in you or your doomed little revolution so I expect you to stay out of my business."

"Well if you had been honest with me in the first place I wouldn't have had to listen-"

"Save it," Han interjected. "I don't owe you a thing, alright? You say I should have been honest with you from the start? But I barely know you, Princess, I met you a week ago for kriff's sake! What did you expect me to do, tell you my whole life story? Run my mouth and risk having the entire Rebellion know that I gotta price on my head? How stupid do you think I am?"

"Very if you think anyone in the Alliance would have even thought about handing you over to some gangster!" Leia returned.

"I wasn't going to take that chance," Han replied. "I don't know any of them, same as I don't know you, not really. And as soon as this is over and I get you back to Drongar, we won't ever see each other again so that ain't a problem."

"So you want me to believe that everything we've been through hasn't affected you at all? That you can just walk away and forget about all of it?"

"Believe whatever you want, Sweetheart, but I'm leaving," Han answered. "I didn't sign up to any insurrections when I agreed to fly the kid and the old man to Alderaan. I got my money, now I need to get my neck off the block."

"Maz doesn't seem to think there's any hope of you being able to do that," Leia retorted.

"Well, Maz doesn't know Jabba like I do." Han picked up another stone but, rather than delicately skim it across the water, he angrily hurled it as far as he could. "Jabba's a businessman and I'm the best smuggler he's got so, as long as I've got that money, I've got a chance."

Leia thought that Han hadn't sounded nearly as confident during his talk with Maz as he did now; then he'd called himself a "dead man walking", now he was back to treating the whole situation like a simple inconvenience that could be easily addressed.

"Is that really a risk you want to take?" she asked, unable to mask the pleading tone in her voice now. "You would rather take that chance than stay with us?"

"We've been over this, Your Worship. I ain't sticking around with the Rebellion, how many more times do I have to say it?"

"So you don't care at all that Luke and I just want you to be safe?" She stepped toward him, trying to catch his eye but Han's gaze was fixed on the vast mountains that lay on the dark horizon. "Han," Leia implored him, desperate to get through this ridiculous facade once and for all, appeal to the man rather than pit her wits against the mercenary. "After everything you've done for us, for the Rebellion, we want you to be safe... _Please,_ think about this before you go rushing off to try and pay this debt of yours. At least consider-"

He cut her off by exhaling heavily through his nose, almost resignedly Leia thought and, for the briefest of moments, she wondered whether her candidness might have finally resonated with him. But then he looked into her eyes and she saw that his had darkened to such an extent that they seemed more black than brown. The expression on his face was so cold, so unfeeling, that she shivered.

And any hope she'd held of convincing him to stay with the Rebellion instantly evaporated.

"I never asked or wanted you to care about me, Princess," he said in a flat, lifeless tone.

 _That's it,_ thought Leia. _He's as good as gone now._

Han began to make his way back up the bank, toward the dirt path they'd all walked along to the castle that morning. "I'm going back to the _Falcon,_ " he told her simply over his shoulder.

Leia watched him until he disappeared beyond the curve of the forest boundary, his head bowed and shoulders hunched.

 _You knew you'd take this as a failure,_ she scolded herself. _This is what failure feels like._

Remaining here now, savouring the fresh air and scents of the planet's flora, had lost it's appeal. Leia felt too unsettled, her emotions were too close to the verge of overwhelming her. She could console herself that she had clearly given Han too much credit in believing that there was more to him than he was willing to allow anyone to see but that didn't her feel any better. All that was left now was to get through the return trip to the Rebellion, stay out of Han's way and then allow him to go to whatever fate awaited him.

Rather than return to the castle, she followed the path he'd taken back to the _Falcon,_ intending to lock herself in her cabin and remain there until they were back on Drongar.

* * *

There wasn't much about his homeworld, besides whiskey and its ship-building heritage, that Han remembered with any sense of fondness.

His youth on Corellia hadn't exactly been easy but he wasn't really bitter about that. As far as Han was concerned, his life could have ended up a hell of a lot worse than it had turned out; there were a lot of names and faces he could recall from his past that had never made it to adulthood, others were slaves to the vices that had been commonplace on the streets of Coronet City.

In spite of all of the scrapes he'd gotten himself into over the years, Han had made it further than most of the kids he'd grown up alongside.

And he'd come this far without the burden of having to care about anyone else, of having to shoulder the burden of being cared about by others. He had Chewie and the _Falcon_ and that was more than enough; he didn't need friends and had no semblance of yearning for a family. He'd grown up alone and found that that was an existence he was entirely comfortable with, one that allowed him to be the master of his own destiny.

But that didn't mean that he was an entirely unsentimental man.

So once Chewie and Luke had returned to the ship and retired to their cabins to sleep, arguing loudly about a foolish and costly move that Luke had made in their game of sabaac, Han took a seat at the banquette in the main hold and listened to the music that emanated from the technical station.

He didn't particularly like the music; it was orchestral and formal-sounding, not at all to his tastes. But it put him in a wistful mood, spurred memories of nights spent in the Teeno Village district and the outdoor concerts he'd seen when his most pressing concern had been when and from where his next meal would come. And when he was tense, on edge about something, he found that it had a strangely calming effect on him.

It was one of the few idiosyncrasies he had that Chewie didn't mock him for, though Han always expected him to. It was as though the Wookie was somehow attuned to the relevance of the music in Han's life, understood that it was meaningful in a way that Han was probably too stubborn to admit. So whenever it played, Chewie seemed to instinctively know to give Han so space.

And he really needed space tonight.

Leia had arrived back at the _Falcon_ only a few minutes after him but he hadn't seen her since their argument down by the lake. Given how stubborn she could be, Han didn't expect to see her again until they reached the Alliance base on Drongar and didn't hold out much hope that she would speak to him again before they parted ways for the final time.

Having had some time to think about their earlier exchange, Han now regretted the things he'd said to her.

He'd been within his rights to be angry at the princess for listening in on his conversation with Maz back at the castle. But in dismissing Leia's admittance that she cared from him so callously, Han felt now that he'd been unjustifiably cruel to her.

In truth, she'd spooked him a little. In the brief time that had passed since they'd met, Her Worship seemed to have gone out of her way to not give Han the impression that she cared about him in the same way she did Luke; Han knew that she did, had done so since the Death Star but it was just easier to ignore it and and not make his imminent departure any more complicated than it had to be.

Knowing that she cared about him did feel like something of a burden he didn't need given everything that she'd lost so recently; though it was presumptuous on his part to believe it might, Han didn't want his own leaving to cause Leia any more upset than she was already dealing with.

Far scarier than now knowing she did care for him was the realisation that he cared about her too. Intensely.

But it nonetheless irritated Han that Leia's confessions of concern for his wellbeing always came with the caveat of being shared with Luke or the Rebellion. He knew that the kid was just as concerned for him and Chewie as Leia was, that there were others within the ranks of the Alliance who hoped that he'd stay. It seemed that Leia was incapable of just admitting that she cared for him without having to mention that Luke was worried about him too or that Rieekan really thought he'd be a valuable asset to the Rebellion.

Not that she would ever do so now given what he'd said to her earlier.

He'd hoped to have a good night's sleep having spent the entirety of the journey to Takodana awake and on watch but he was too restless now, had too much on his mind. Part of him couldn't wait for this all to be over, to get back to Drongar, settle things up with the Rebellion and say his farewells; but then another part of him, one that was becoming increasingly more difficult to ignore, had begun to question whether he was doing the right thing in leaving.

And that was down to Her Worshipfulness.

The situation was reaching a point where his choice was a simple one: get out from under the Rebellion now or risk humiliating himself later on. As much as he might have told himself differently, irrespective of how little time he'd known her, Han couldn't deny that there was _something_ about Leia that was making what should have been an easy decision for him a hell of a difficult one.

A noise in the entryway of the ship's main corridor broke his reverie.

It was Leia. Glancing around nervously, seemingly hesitant to look at him, she'd brought with her the thick blanket from her cabin and draped it around her shoulders; Han guessed that she'd been intending to sleep in the main hold again, as she had the previous night.

"I heard music," she murmured gently.

Han made to stant up. "I can turn it off if it's disturbing you."

Leia shook her head, mumbling that it was fine. She had a faraway, pensive look in her eyes, as though the music was evoking memories for her just as it did for him.

She sat on the very end of the banquette, perching on the edge of the seat and rested her chin in the palm of her hand. Han watched her silently, wondering what she was thinking, where she'd gone in her mind. One side of the blanket had slipped off her shoulder so he could see that she was wearing what must be standard-issue Alliance nightwear: a loose-fitting white camisole and grey bottoms,

"Listen, if you want to sleep out here again, I can leave you alone," he offered.

She smiled ruefully. "So you know I slept out here last night?"

He nodded. "Is there something wrong with your cabin?"

"No," Leia answered. "The cabin is fine, thank you. I just couldn't sleep last night and when I came out here there was just...something that helped me relax to relax. I think it's the engines, being able to hear them so clearly...maybe they just drown out my own thoughts."

Han thought better of prying any further. Her explanation did make sense to him; the cabins were sound-proofed so distractions from one's own thoughts were hard to come by. And Leia had more reason than most to need a distraction.

"Well, I'll leave you to it," he said, beginning to rise from his seat.

"No, stay," she told him, perhaps a little more eagerly that she'd intended. "I mean, you can stay," she continued in a more purposefully measured tone. "If you want to, that is...you don't have to leave."

He didn't say anything in reply, simply settled back on his seat and casually crossed his feet.

The atmosphere between them wasn't free from awkwardness. While Leia seemed content to sit in silence and gaze wistfully ahead into nothingness, Han contemplated whether to bring up their earlier confrontation by the lake. He wanted to; his inclination was to apologise, not so much for being angry but for how he'd cast her confession of concern for him aside so tactlessly.

But the right words were hard to come by.

"You know, I really would never have guessed that you listen to this type of music," Leia said.

Han smirked. "So what kind of music would you guess I do listen to, Your Worship?"

"Anything that's loud and aggravating," answered Leia wryly. "Probably the kind of music that I would hate, that would give me a migraine."

"You trying to hint that _I_ give you a migraine. Princess?" Han chuckled. "'Cause that's what it sounds like from where I'm sitting. I'm pretty sure you've accused me of being loud _and_ aggravating at least at least a couple dozen times now."

She simply raised an eyebrow coyly and Han couldn't help but laugh. It was as though everything that has transpired between them earlier had never happened. He reasoned that perhaps Leia might have simply decided to give up on trying to convince him to stay, had accepted that his future lay on a different path than her own and that of the Rebellion. But whereas such a thought should have come as a relief to him, Han found himself inexplicably hoping that it wasn't the case.

"We used to have music like this at the palace," Leia continued, her voice quietening slightly and Han found himself leaning forward slightly so that he didn't miss a word; he had yet to really hear her talk about Alderaan.

"It wasn't exactly like this," the princess went on. "The music on Alderaan was... _gentler_ ; I suppose that's a good word for it. We used to have functions at the palace, whenever a foreign dignitary came to Alderaan or if it was a birthday or an anniversary...I used to hate them." She smiled then and scratched absent-mindedly at her forearm. "My aunts would insist on getting me ready for them; Tia would style my hair, Celly would try to decide what I wore and Rouge would always be in the background, lecturing me on how I should behave, reminding me of who I was and what I had to represent."

"I'm surprised that didn't drive you crazy," Han muttered.

"I was driven close to crazy a few times," Leia replied. "Once, when I was twelve, I actually ran away...well, I only hid in a storage compartment in one of the palace hangars for a few hours but you'd have thought that I managed to get offworld if you saw my aunts' reaction."

Han listened with rapt attention, captivated by how honest, how _real,_ she was being. This was different to hearing her talk about politics or the war or the Rebellion; she was offering him a glimpse into her life and her family, one that he doubted she'd been prepared to offer to anyone since the loss of Alderaan. And he hadn't asked her to do so, she'd volunteered it, taken the initiative in this conversation and opened up to him in a way that made Han feel strangely privileged.

"Sounds like you've always been a bit of a rebel, Sweetheart."

"I suppose I have," Leia replied in little more than a whisper.

A shadow passed over her face then, just a flicker of the grief she had to have battled against just to tell him what she had. It was in moments like this that Han wished he had some of Luke's youthful naivety; the kid would just reach out to her now, think nothing of offering a heartfelt embrace and would know the right things to say.

Han couldn't bring himself to do the same.

He just wasn't a heart-on-sleeve kind of guy. As much as he empathised with Leia, knew that he was probably the only person around her now who wasn't buying her stoic act, Han still felt like he was treading on uneven ground with her, that she wouldn't accept from him what she would from Luke; he imagined that if he tried to hug Leia, she'd more than likely push him away.

And given how he'd upset her earlier, Han wasn't sure he'd blame her if she did.

But it nonetheless only felt right to him that he acknowledge her openness with him. He'd watched her laugh earlier that at Maz's stories, seen how interested Leia was in learning anything she could about him. If he really was leaving the Rebellion and, more than likely, never going to see the princess again, he figured that there was no harm in him being as honest as she had.

"You know, I really don't like this music," he began, gesturing at the technical station. "I didn't go to any fancy parties like you did but I guess it reminds me of stuff too."

She suddenly seemed to move closer to him in anticipation and, for the first time Han got a sense of just how eager she had to be to learn anything she could about him. He had to be a real contrast to Luke who was so forthcoming with stories about the farm he'd grown up on back on Tatooine; Han just didn't talk about himself or his past to anyone besides Chewie and there were still things that he hadn't yet disclosed to his Wookie co-pilot, was unsure whether he ever would.

"I grew up in Coronet City; you know all about Corellia, right?" She nodded and Han continued.

"I was kind of a...well, let's just say I had to look out for myself. There were nights when they had these outdoor parties in one of the nicer districts; there'd be these big stages and there'd be bands playing this music and the richer folks would get all dressed up and dance to it...the get-ups that some of the women used to wear were incredible...but weird at the same time, like the ones wearing them wanted everyone else to know that they had money, you know?"

"Anyway, those were the nights that kids like me stood a chance of getting a decent meal. There were all these rich people, all getting drunk and having a good time...it was real easy to lift a wallet and the credits those people would spend in a night would feed me for a week."

Han could see the sympathy in her eyes but tried to ignore it; he hated being pitied, particularly as he'd turned out well enough even if the odds had been against him when he was a kid, so he persevered.

"There were some nights back then when I'd just listen to the music...can't say I really like or miss anything about Corellia, but I guess remembering back to that helps me forget the stuff I don't wanna think about now, I guess."

 _That wasn't so bad,_ he thought when he'd finished speaking, Leia was still looking at him in a way he didn't quite like but Han had been as open and honest now as he was going to be, as open and honest as she had been with him. He hadn't said anything substantial, hadn't divulged any of the secrets he'd kept guarded for so long, but he still felt strangely vulnerable, like he'd offered her a thread with which she could now try to unravel him further if she so wished.

But rather than ask questions, Leia simply smiled.

"It's strange to think of you having a home besides the _Falcon,"_ she said gently.

He chuckled. "Well everybody's got a home, Sweetheart."

It took him a moment to realise just what he'd said and who he'd said it to and when he did, his heart sank.

Leia for her part didn't really react. She seemed to grimace slightly but gathered herself quickly, brushing off his flustered attempts to apologise and explain away his moment of thoughtlessness.

"Kest, Sweetheart, I-I'm sorry I didn't think-"

"It's fine, Han, really."

"No it's not...kriff, what the hell am I thinking."

She reached out and laid a hand on his forearm. "Don't worry about it," she said. "I know what you meant...it's alright, really."

Han sighed, unable to believe his own stupidity.

"You just wanna start this whole thing over?" he asked and Leia frowned enquiringly. He reached out his hand to shake hers, as though greeting her for the first time. "Han Solo," he mock-introduced himself as. "I've got a big mouth and don't think before I say stupid stuff."

Leia laughed but shook his hand and Han nearly sighed in audible relief that he'd managed to diffuse the horrible moment of tension he'd caused. "I'm Leia," she replied, "and while I agree that you should think more before you speak in general Han Solo, you're being too hard on yourself now."

Once the handshake was over, Han waited for Leia to let go of his hand but she didn't; they sat there, hands clasped, looking into one another's eyes and tension of a different kind arose.

"I'm sorry for what happened earlier," Leia murmured. "I overstepped my boundaries...I shouldn't have involved myself in your business, not when it has nothing to do with me."

Han marvelled at how professional and polished she managed to make the most basic of apologies sound, wondered whether it was intentional on Leia's part or just a habit she'd picked up and that had been instilled in her from her days in the Senate.

"I'm sorry too," he said softly.

She finally released his hand and Han only realised now that she'd moved so close to him that they were sitting side by side. And, emboldened for reasons that he wasn't sure he could explain, he slowly reached an arm over and across her shoulders. When she didn't flinch at the contact, let alone pull away, he gently pulled her a little closer into his side and she gently laid her head on his shoulder.

He might not have been a heart-on-sleeve kind of guy but Han was a gambler and he'd judged his last move correctly. But he wasn't going to think any further ahead than this, now; he didn't know or understand what was happening, what this sudden and safe intimacy between them might mean and he didn't want to ruin the moment, risk throwing away the progress they'd made in reconciling after their earlier unpleasant confrontation.

"So, what will happen when we get back to Drongar?" Leia asked. "Will you leave right away?"

 _Say yes,_ Han cautioned himself. _You have to stick to your word, you can't stay with the Rebellion so tell her yes, you'll be leaving just as soon as you've dropped her off with the Rebellion._

"I dunno."

 _You weak, pathetic idiot._

Han could feel Leia suddenly tense under his touch, sensed her squaring her shoulders and take in a tremulous breath, as though she was preparing herself to face something daunting.

"I think you should stay," she whispered. "I think you should stay with us."

 _Us? It's always us with her._

Han didn't say anything, just tried to ignore the way his heart rate had quickened slightly and concentrate on the music. He could feel her head move on his shoulder, tilt upward so that she was looking at the underside of his jaw. With the gentlest of touches, she placed one finger on his chin and directed him to turn his face toward hers.

" _I_ want you to stay," Leia breathed.

 _Finally_ , he thought.

They were in such close proximity now that Han didn't need to lean forward to kiss her. It was brief and chaste but she responded immediately, moaned softly when his lips made contact with her own. Her eyes were entrancing, imploring him not to stop whatever was about to happen.

So he pressed another kiss to her lips, equally chaste but slightly longer than the first. Her hand reached across to take hold of the collar of his jacket, keeping him in place. He gently placed his own hand on her side, enticing her closer to him.

The third kiss was anything but chaste; as soon as her mouth opened invitingly against his, Han knew he'd let things go too far.

He wasn't sure how or at what point during the kiss Leia had moved so close that she crawled into his lap, a knee braced on the banquette on either side of him, nor when he inched up the hem of her camisole to feel the warm and soft skin of her torso. She was nervous, uncertain; he could sense it in the way she would pull back intermittently, as though trying to gauge his response to what was happening between them.

He pressed her back against the Dejarik table, unwilling to even think about taking this any further but unsure at the same time whether this single moment could ever be enough for him when it came to Leia; thoughts of leaving the Alliance vanished from his mind entirely.

Leia pulled back and tenderly bowed her forehead to Han's. Her eyes were closed and she took quick, shallow breaths. Han pressed gentle kisses to her cheeks, the tip of her nose, her chin, unable to believe this was happening and unwilling to contemplate it ending any time soon.

"Will you stay?" she asked.

He was ready to promise that he would do whatever she asked of him; he'd stay with the Rebellion, fight a war for her, anything.

This would never work, was probably doomed to end in disaster given how different they were, but he'd accept all of the inevitable fallout for however many moments like this he might be lucky enough to experience before then. It was crazy, went against every single one of his better instincts, but he wanted her; he didn't care if he'd met her a week ago, that she could push his temper to its limits faster than anyone he'd ever met.

She was intoxicating, had ensnared him when she'd called him Flyboy and ordered him into a garbage compactor. Jabba and the rest of the galaxy be damned, he'd been a risk taker all his life and this, with Leia, might just be worth taking his biggest risk yet.

But before he could answer, before he could even begin to formulate a response, they were disturbed by a noise in the corridor.

"Han? Is that you?"

In an instant, Leia had slid off his lap, pushed her camisole down to cover her exposed torso and wrapped her discarded blanket around her shoulders again. Han didn't have the time to say anything to her before she'd muttered a hasty goodnight and rushed out of the main hold.

Luke stumbled into view, tiredly rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hands.

"What's going on?" he mumbled. "What's wrong with Leia?"


End file.
